28
JANE Μ. OPPENHEIMER
ginning to be investigated in what were to grow into the schools of
genetics proper. When Briggs, in the 1950's (Briggs and King, 1952,
1955; King and Briggs, 1955), continues
his artful experiments
which attempt to delimit the time at which the nucleus of an embryonic
cell is no longer totipotent to govern development, he carries to a logical
extreme a line of thought and experiment begun by Spemann (1914,
1928), by the latter carried only through the 32-cell stage, but completely unequivocal in disproving for that stage the Roux-Weismann
theory. (Roux, by the way, opinionated though he was in many other
respects, gracefully relinquished this theory once it had been experimentally invalidated.)
The early studies designed to test the Roux-Weismann hypothesis were, as already pointed out, performed independently of studies of
genetics as such. The bringing to light of their results, and the subsequent establishment of the gene theory by Morgan and his group might
have been expected, especially since Morgan himself had begun his
career as an embryologist, to have led immediately to the realization
that the fundamental problem of biological specificity can be viewed as
an embryological one: by what chain of mechanisms does the action of
the genes specify a cell or group of cells to become different from others?
Morgan's own book "Embryology and Genetics" as late as 1934 considered just precisely what its title implies, the two disciplines as completely separate, and the word "and" in his title is as diagnostic of the
book's contents as are the two nouns. This is in sharp opposition to the
great work of Ε. B. Wilson, "The Cell in Development and Inheritance"
which already in its first edition (1896) on the cytological side ventured
to include not only in its title but also its full text as full and general a
view as was possible at the time of the relationships of cytological data
to the study of embryology and heredity. In this and in subsequent
editions (1900, 1925) Wilson set a fashion for the cytological investigations of developmental and genetic phenomena which has not only culminated in the modern studies of cytogenetics and cytochemistry, but
which has linked the study of the structure and function of the cell to
its development and inheritance inseparably for all time.
The evasion for many years of embryological considerations by the
formal American schools of genetics, which has a moment ago been
contrasted with their recognition by the most influential of American
cytologists, was fortunately not a universal phenomenon, and some of
those who have investigated heredity on a broader physiological basis
than Morgan and his colleagues and successors have always remained
far closer to the study of development. Goldschmidt has always not only
JANE Μ. OPPENHEIMER
ginning to be investigated in what were to grow into the schools of
genetics proper. When Briggs, in the 1950's (Briggs and King, 1952,
1955; King and Briggs, 1955), continues
his artful experiments
which attempt to delimit the time at which the nucleus of an embryonic
cell is no longer totipotent to govern development, he carries to a logical
extreme a line of thought and experiment begun by Spemann (1914,
1928), by the latter carried only through the 32-cell stage, but completely unequivocal in disproving for that stage the Roux-Weismann
theory. (Roux, by the way, opinionated though he was in many other
respects, gracefully relinquished this theory once it had been experimentally invalidated.)
The early studies designed to test the Roux-Weismann hypothesis were, as already pointed out, performed independently of studies of
genetics as such. The bringing to light of their results, and the subsequent establishment of the gene theory by Morgan and his group might
have been expected, especially since Morgan himself had begun his
career as an embryologist, to have led immediately to the realization
that the fundamental problem of biological specificity can be viewed as
an embryological one: by what chain of mechanisms does the action of
the genes specify a cell or group of cells to become different from others?
Morgan's own book "Embryology and Genetics" as late as 1934 considered just precisely what its title implies, the two disciplines as completely separate, and the word "and" in his title is as diagnostic of the
book's contents as are the two nouns. This is in sharp opposition to the
great work of Ε. B. Wilson, "The Cell in Development and Inheritance"
which already in its first edition (1896) on the cytological side ventured
to include not only in its title but also its full text as full and general a
view as was possible at the time of the relationships of cytological data
to the study of embryology and heredity. In this and in subsequent
editions (1900, 1925) Wilson set a fashion for the cytological investigations of developmental and genetic phenomena which has not only culminated in the modern studies of cytogenetics and cytochemistry, but
which has linked the study of the structure and function of the cell to
its development and inheritance inseparably for all time.
The evasion for many years of embryological considerations by the
formal American schools of genetics, which has a moment ago been
contrasted with their recognition by the most influential of American
cytologists, was fortunately not a universal phenomenon, and some of
those who have investigated heredity on a broader physiological basis
than Morgan and his colleagues and successors have always remained
far closer to the study of development. Goldschmidt has always not only